Cheers
by LeftPawedPolarBear
Summary: (Lizzie Bennet Diaries Universe) After nearly two years Lydia is finally ready to confront Gigi Darcy. *Some Dizzie, but mostly Lydia*


Perhaps for the first time ever, Lydia doesn't feel like dancing. Granted, for the past two hours she has been the life of the party, jumping all over the place, leading everyone in the Cha-Cha slide, dragging both of her laughing sisters into the middle of the dance-floor where amidst the happiness and chaos they could have a little moment just the three of them. But when the music slows down and Stephen indicates questioningly towards where Jane and Bing are already swaying, Lydia smiles and shakes her head. Stephen doesn't question it, just bends down and kisses her, murmuring _I love you_ against her forehead, and goes to sit with Mr. Bennet in the corner. Lydia watches him for a moment, then turns back to gaze at the dance-floor where both of her sisters are now turning slowly, blissfully on the spot with their (brand-new) husband and boyfriend respectively. There are a lot of things she's grown to love about Stephen—the way his smile takes up his whole face, the way she can always tell what he is thinking just by looking into his eyes, the fact that he is working towards a master's in engineering so he can talk for hours with her father about trains—but the best thing by far is that he has to bend down to kiss her forehead. Lydia is taller than both of her sisters and though she'll never admit it to Lizzie's face, she's always been a bit jealous of how Darcy has to bend down and pull her up onto her tiptoes just to kiss her. Most of the guys she's dated in the past have been taller than her, but she could usually still meet their eyes. At a towering six foot five, Stephen can pull Lydia into his arms in a way no other guy has ever really been able to do before and—though she's only just starting to think about it—in a way that she doesn't really want any other guy to be able to do after him.

Picking up her flute of champagne (only her second; she decided this morning that she wants to be able remember this night with minimal drunken haziness) she walks toward the bar, where she sees one of the only other people that hasn't paired off on the dance-floor, someone she's been meaning to talk to anyway. She rests her elbow on the counter and smiles. Gigi Darcy smiles back pleasantly, if a bit hesitantly, and raises her glass slightly. "Cheers," she says.

"Cheers," Lydia echoes, and they clink glasses gently. Lydia takes a sip of champagne, then indicates with her flute towards Lizzie and Darcy, who are now shamelessly embracing, murmuring softly to each other amidst the other dancing couples. "I give us six months before we're back here again for them."

Gigi laughs. "Six months? Six _weeks_, more like." She turns away from Lydia to watch her brother, smiling. "It's been two years since they finally got their act together, and they've already been living together for almost nine months. I'm not really sure what they're waiting for, at this point."

"You're forgetting to factor in the time it will take for Lizzie and my mother to agree on flowers, dresses, and location. Not to mention the guest list!"

"Fair enough. Six weeks until he proposes, five months for Lizzie and your mother to decide between roses and lavenders."

Lydia grins, happy the tension has been broken. This is a meeting she's been dreading for a while now. Technically it's not their first encounter; ever since Jane and Bing got engaged they've both been too involved in wedding planning to avoid each other completely, but Lydia's managed to steer clear of Gigi for the most part. She's not sure, but she suspects Gigi has been doing the same thing.

Her feelings towards Gigi are complicated; much more complicated than anyone—except perhaps Gigi—suspects. For the first six months after George (she can say his name without wincing now) she worked hard on rebuilding her relationship with her sisters and her parents. She went to a counselor regularly, but mostly she just stayed at home with Lizzie, sprawled out on her bed, talking. They would talk for hours, about nothing or everything, whatever Lydia was in the mood for. Even after Lizzie and Darcy began dating, Lizzie was always sure to leave at least a couple of hours every day to spend with her sister. Looking back on their relationship prior to "the incident" Lydia was surprised and ashamed to discover that she and Lizzie had essentially stopped talking when Lizzie entered college. On its most basic level it was a matter of convenience—they left the house at different times, they talked about different things, they spent their free time with different people—but now Lydia sees that it wouldn't have been nearly as bad if they had put in a little effort. After all, Lizzie and Jane remained close when Jane went off to college and even when Jane started working a full-time job. Jane remained Lizzie's second-best friend, whereas, in Lizzie's own words, "Lydia didn't even rank".

So it was nice to lie there with her big sister and get to know her, find out who she had become in the six years or so, since they had last had an amiable discussion lasting more than two minutes. And it was nice to really, truly be herself around someone, and know that Lizzie wasn't going to push her to do or say anything she wasn't comfortable with, to know that Lizzie was going to give her space if she needed it, or comfort and support if she needed that.

Gigi was the first thing Lydia found she couldn't be entirely honest about. It wasn't because she didn't want to be honest, because she really did. But when Lizzie first casually brought up the idea of getting them in touch, Lydia smiled and shook her head. When she pressed the issue, Lydia shrugged noncommittally and said something about how she didn't really think they had much in common and then quickly changed the topic. Lizzie, having gradually developed a sense for when Lydia was getting uncomfortable with a discussion, dropped the subject, but not before eyeing Lydia with an interested and slightly confused look.

When Gigi followed her on Twitter a month later, Lydia thought for a long time, but didn't follow her back. She waited with bated breath to see what Gigi would do next, but after several weeks with no activity, she forgot about it.

The problem was that no one could see what Lydia thought was an obvious hole in the Lydia-And-Gigi-Should-Be-Friends plan. As similar as their interests were, as alike as their situations might be, (and they weren't really, if truth be told) the fact of the matter was she and Gigi had fallen in love with the same person. And the same person had shown interest in both of them. And the same person had broken both of their hearts.

Lost love can bring people together, but Lizzie and Darcy didn't seem to understand how it could also drive people apart. For the first year after George, Lydia couldn't hear Gigi's name is passing without thinking of her and George together and it hurt her, physically hurt her, to think that someone had once needed George as much as she had needed him. By then she knew that he didn't really love her, but that didn't change the fact that she had truly loved him, and the thought that Gigi had received the same attention she had was awful. So while she didn't blame her sister and Darcy for trying to push them together, she also refused to let it happen.

The change began when she watched the Domino videos. She had in fact come across them in her search for the person who had taken down George's site (at the time, she was still referring to it as "the site," even in her head) but when she saw Gigi's face in the thumbnails she closed the window without even watching the first one. It had been too raw, too fresh—after all, she was still hoping against hope that George had realized the error of his ways and taken down the site himself.

She found them again, almost a year later, when she finally decided to follow Gigi on Twitter. There was a link to the videos on her page, and she was watching them before she even realized she had clicked on the link.

In the videos, she watched an intelligent, enthusiastic, and, yes, _energetic_ young woman with Darcy in her face but not in her mannerisms who, although she never mentioned names, was obviously determined to help Lizzie and Lydia from the start. She watched her encourage her brother in his search (she realized quickly that she had to show these videos to Lizzie, even though she and Darcy had by that time been dating for close to a year) and she watched her help out in her own way, in _any_ way she can. Finally, she watched Gigi choose to confront her past once and for all and when George's face appeared onscreen and he called Gigi "peach" Lydia's heart skipped a beat and she almost turned off the computer, but she ultimately decided to keep watching. She could do this. She _needed_ to do this, the same way Gigi needed to have the conversation that is playing out onscreen. And when Gigi ended the recording in tears Lydia realized that she was crying too, and discovered that now, a year later, she was going through the exact same thing that Gigi went through and although it was hard, she was going to come out of it alive, just like Gigi had. In a sense, they went through it together, Gigi onscreen and Lydia as the retrospective observer.

She didn't watch the last video (after all, she knew what happened next) but she saw Gigi smiling in the preview and that was enough for her. Then she dug through her desk drawer and took out the necklace that she had kept there for over a year. No one knew it was there—it's the only other thing that she hadn't been honest about. She knew that George doesn't love her, knew that he never loved her, and she'd already moved on in a lot of ways. But she kept the necklace because, in spite of everything, she still didn't feel a complete sense of closure. And she put it in her desk, knowing that when she threw it out, everything would be over once and for all.

She walked to the pond while her parents were out to dinner, and she threw the necklace as far as she could.

The change continued, and ultimately ended, with Stephen. Lydia, ever the flirt, (though not at all a slut) had been absent from the flirting scene since she and George first began their relationship, over a year previous. At one time a regular at Carter's Bar, she hadn't been there since the site went up, going as far as to insist the Charlotte's and Lizzie's celebration be held elsewhere. But now, a year later, Lydia felt she was ready to get back out there—with a couple of changes. She had spent the year reflecting on her failed relationship with George, and carefully observing the rather more successful relationships of her two sisters, and she gradually came to one conclusion: maybe commitment, _healthy_ commitment, isn't such a bad thing after all.

She watched her sisters interact with their men, teasing them, calling them pet names, curling up them on a couch to watch a movie or read books or share a bowl of popcorn. When Lizzie began to stress about the startup of her company, Lydia watched her answer the door, nearly in tears, to find that Darcy had flown down from San Francisco the moment he had detected Lizzie's distress and was standing before her, in person, complete with a paper bag full of Chinese food. She watched them embrace; no kissing, just holding each other, before Lizzie turned, sensing Lydia standing there, and asked her to join them for dinner, which Lydia politely declined.

Lizzie officially moved to San Francisco three weeks later.

She wasn't jealous of her sisters, not exactly. She wasn't even really jealous of what they had with Bing and Darcy because she had never bothered pursue a relationship before George. But she decided that she wanted to try.

It was strange at first, looking at the dating scene as a _dating_ scene, instead of a _casual-hookup_ scene, and things started out slowly. She went on a couple of dates—real, official dates, with restaurants and only one bottle of wine between them—with a quiet guy who sat in the back of her Comparative Literature class who had been smiling nervously at her for weeks, and she found him to be a sweet, intelligent person for whom she had nothing but respect, but they both agreed that there was no spark. They remained friends and study partners, and it was the first time Lydia had ever stayed on speaking terms with a romantic partner, which she considered progress.

About a month later, she was in the library looking for a book her Introduction to Psychology teacher had recommended for the project she was doing, when she tripped—and promptly fell—over a pair of long legs she had failed to see jutting out into the aisle. Arms flailing in an effort to break her fall, she managed to knock an entire shelf of books onto the floor with her left hand, and the glasses off the nose belonging to the long legs with her right. Amid the flurry of hushed "I'm so sorry"s and "No it was _my_ fault"s from both Lydia and the owner of the long legs, Lydia spotted the wire-rimmed reading glasses on the floor, snatched them up, turned to the man to whom they belonged—and forgot what her own name was.

Lydia had hooked up with some hot guys in the past, George being only the most recent in a respectable line of handsome swimmers and community college attendees Lydia had snatched up and thrown out at one time or another. But never, in all of her years of junior high, high school, or college had she seen eyes quite like Stephen's. They were brown (who would have thought that brown eyes could be so mesmerizing?) but they were such a deep, warm brown that Lydia felt a physical pull towards them, and she had a brief, crazy image of being pulled _into_ them and swimming around in this man's eyes, warm and safe and secure forever. And then he grinned widely and took the glasses from her, shattering the image and forcing her to look at him as a whole.

What she saw was a tall, thin guy in white sneakers, jeans, and a blue polo shirt with brown hair (_the same color as his eyes_, she thought giddily, without knowing why) propped up on his hands and knees and already beginning the process of gathering up and organizing the books that had fallen. Quickly, she moved to join him and by the time they had figured out the order the books were supposed to be replaced on the shelf she knew that his name was Stephen, that he was working towards a master's in engineering, and that she had a date with him the following night.

Maybe she should have been nervous about commitment after George, even a year later. Maybe it should have taken some time for her to fully give herself to another relationship. But the wonderful thing about Stephen and spending time with him was it never felt like she _needed_ to do anything. He was fun and witty and easy-going, and if she had to postpone a date because she had an essay due the next day, it's fine because he's been putting off his own project for long enough and he should probably get it out of the way while he can, as long as she promises to text him the moment she's free. More often than not, she'd text him before that and they'd chat for a couple of minutes, both eager to escape their responsibilities for a little while, but inevitably one of them would take on the role of the "responsible one" and end the conversation with the promise of continuing it again the minute they were both finished.

After three months it was by far the longest relationship Lydia had ever been in, and she went whole weeks without thinking about George. Stephen, who was living away from home, came over to the Bennet house for dinner at least once a week, helping to fill the void of Lizzie's and Jane's absence. She told him about George about a month after they started dating. She put it off for a while, but when she explained what had happened she was as honest as she ever was with Lizzie, both in telling him what happened and how it had changed her. He was a little upset that she hadn't told him sooner, but after a moment he smiled and held her close and thanked her for sharing this piece of her with him. He didn't say anything else, but then again, there wasn't really anything she would want him to say—yet.

On their six month anniversary, she told him she loved him, and after no more than a split second of stunned silence his beautiful eyes lit up and his face broke into the grin that she loved so much and he pulled her into his arms, echoing the words. When they broke apart, he smiled again and said that he had wanted to tell her he loved her five months previous, when she told him about George, but he had decided to wait until she was ready to take the initiative. And what could Lydia do, after being told that, except tangle her fingers in his brown hair and kiss him, and whisper _I love you I love you I love you_ over and over again against his lips, just to make sure he got the message?

As luck would have it, they received the official invitation for Jane and Bing's wedding that very afternoon (Lydia still referred to them as "Jing" whenever she got the chance; some things never change) and when Lydia asked Stephen if he would be her plus-one, he bowed and dramatically touched his lips lightly to the back of her hand, saying "It would be an honor" and it was all she could do to toss the envelope aside and kiss him again.

That was three months ago. Those three months had been filled with classes and wedding planning and trips to San Francisco and, yes, Stephen, but at a certain point it crossed Lydia's mind what this wedding meant for her. On it's most basic level, it meant she was going to have to spend time with Gigi. It was inevitable, really. They were both bridesmaids, they were both heavily involved in the ceremony—and they were being not-so-subtly pushed together by the bride and groom (Jane and Bing, of course, believing in the best in everyone, did not suspect they were doing anything wrong). So she ran into Gigi rather frequently, but somehow she always came up with an excuse to avoid conversation—catching up with her sisters, trying on dresses, distracting her mother—and thankfully, Gigi didn't pursue her.

But why? Why was it "thankfully"? Lydia didn't think about George for weeks on end, she could see Gigi without feeling a pang in her chest, and she was maybe even starting to consider moving in with Stephen after they both got their respective degrees. So why did it still feel so necessary to avoid Gigi?

It wasn't, she realized. Quite the opposite, in fact. All she needed to do was talk to her, and it would be over. Because what Lydia had discovered, all those months ago, when she had cried over George with Gigi across space and time, was that their fates were connected, in a strange, convoluted way. Gigi was, and had always been, the key to the closure Lydia needed. A couple of exchanged pleasantries with Georgiana Darcy, and the George fiasco would be over—for good.

They watch Lizzie and Darcy dance for a while longer in companionable silence. Lydia glances at Gigi; she has eyes only for her brother, a proud smile on her lips as he dips Lizzie, before spinning her around in time to the music. This should be it, she thinks to herself. I should be able to leave now, and get on with my life once and for all.

But something still seemed unfinished. So, hesitating slightly, she turned toward Gigi, and took a deep breath. "Gigi."

"Hmm?"

"I—" she faltered. Gigi waited, looking slightly nervous, but nodding encouragingly. She began again. "Gigi, I need to thank you."

Now she looked confused. "Thank me? For what?"

"I saw the Pemberley videos."

"Oh."

Now Gigi was the one who looked scared, but the words were flowing more easily for Lydia now that she had begun. "I saw what you and Dar—your brother did for us. And I know why your brother did it, and I've already thanked him more times than he can stand… But you didn't have any reason to help me, and you did anyway."

Gigi started to speak, but Lydia interrupted. "Wait, let me finish. I saw the video with George, Gigi. What you did… That was the hardest thing I have ever seen anyone do, and you didn't even have to do it. So thank you. Thank you so much." She took a rather unladylike swig of champagne to calm her nerves.

Gigi was looking down. Not knowing what else to say, Lydia played with her champagne flute, waiting. Finally, Gigi looked up. Lydia was surprised and embarrassed to see that her eyes were wet. "Lydia, I wish…" She laughed softly. "I wish I deserved your gratitude. I wish what I had done was as selfless as you make it seem. But the truth is, I called George as much for me as for anyone else."

Now it's Lydia's turn to smile comfortingly. "Believe me, I understand. I might even go as far as to say I understand more than anyone else. But Gigi—"she rested her hand lightly on Gigi's wrist—"_Thank you_ for doing that for yourself. I saw what you did, and how much strength you had, and it got me thinking that maybe…" she looked down at her four-inch heels, "Maybe I could do the same thing. And it took some time, but eventually I did."

"Lydia, whatever you did, whatever you have overcome since George, you did that because you are amazingly strong and, to be honest, kind of the coolest person ever," Gigi said, grinning.

Lydia returned the grin. "That may be true." Her expression became serious again. "But you still set me on the right course. So please accept my thanks?"

Gigi paused, then smiled again. "Thanks accepted."


End file.
